An SEO Guide to the General Election 2015

Nigel Farage Takes Shock Victory at SEO Election 2015

The UKIP leader Nigel Farage has won a landslide victory at the 2015 SEO election. The controversial figure fought off stiff competition from David Cameron to claim this year’s coveted crown.

While the SEO election marked a memorable, albeit surprising, victory for Nigel Farage, it represented a huge failure for the SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon who’s campaign never seemed to get off the ground.

Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats ran a close second to UKIP – in the end losing out on somewhat of a technicality. The Green Party were the biggest surprise of this election with Natalie Bennett putting in an impressive performance.

What is the 2015 SEO election?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation, it is the process of attempting to get a certain website to rank higher in Google searches than its competitors. A good SEO campaign is vital to getting yourself or your business more exposure online.

With the general election under a week away, we decided to look at the success or failure that each potential candidate has had when it comes to their online SEO campaigns.

For this election we analysed how favourable the Google search results were for each candidate – using their own name as the search term. The main indicator that we decided to use was the individual political website of each of the competitors.

We also took into account other factors such as the ranking of their Twitter page, where they appeared in Google’s suggestions after entering their first name and the actual traffic to their website.

Results Criteria:

Ranking of Personal/Political website

We looked at how well each candidates website ranked for their own name.

Ranking of Twitter page

Similarly to the previous criteria – the higher their Twitter page ranked, the better a candidate scored.

Search Suggestions

Whilst the first two criteria gave us enough information to determine our winner, we also looked at how well each candidate did in the search suggestions that Google made after we typed in the first name of each candidate.

For example, when we typed in “David” Google’s dropdown suggestions showed David Beckham as the top search option.

Number of Searches

We also looked at the rate at which each candidate has been searched in the last 30 days.

Website Traffic

Finally, we examined the amount of organic traffic that each candidate’s website received. However we did not give this criteria much weight when it came to the results. The reason for this is that, as this is an SEO election, we were primarily concerned with candidate’s rankings on Google’s search results page (SERP).

The Results

Now for the results of the SEO elections 2015:

The Winners

1st Place – Nigel Farage UKIP

Website: http://www.nigelfaragemep.co.uk/

Nigel Farage was this year’s winner after carrying out a very successful SEO campaign. His own personal website ranks number 1 on Google with his Twitter page coming in at a respectable 4th.

What makes Nigel’s victory all the more impressive is the fact that the website that ranks for his name is his own personal website, as opposed to his party’s political profile for him.

Mr Farage, more so than any other leader, has become truly talismanic for his party. Love him or hate him, he has an ability to grab headlines and get his party the exposure it needed so badly.

This is reflected in the fact that Nigel’s personal Twitter account actually has more followers than UKIP’s own Twitter page. Mr Farage also managed to feature as the second search suggestion for “Nigel”, just behind Nigel Pearson.

2nd Place – Nick Clegg Lib Dems

Website: http://www.libdems.org.uk/nick_clegg

Nick Clegg could possibly be described as the surprise of the year, his huge fall in the opinion polls has not been reflected by a fall on the SERPs. Like Nigel Farage, Nick’s political page and his Twitter page rank 1st and 4th respectively.

However, unlike Mr Farage, the page that ranks for Mr Clegg is part of the Lib Dem’s website – as opposed to being his own website. This ended up being the deciding factor in this year’s election, so unfortunately for Nick it looks like he’ll once again need to settle for the role of deputy.

Nick Clegg also lost out to Nigel Farage when it came to Google’s search suggestions; coming in fourth, below Nicki Minaj and Nick Jr.

Clegg’s page actually received slightly more traffic than the UKIP leader’s. However as it’s not his own page and as he has the advantage of being the Deputy Prime Minister, we decided it was not enough to swing the result in his favour.

This result may leave Nick feeling slightly hard done by, if this is the case, we have one thing to say – “We’re Sorry”.

3rd Place – Natalie Bennett The Green Party & David Cameron The Conservatives (Joint)

Natalie Bennett of The Green Party exceeded expectations by coming in at a very respectable 3rd place. Her page on the Green Party’s website comes in 3rd on Google and her Twitter is just above in 2nd place. David Cameron achieved a similar ranking on Google, with his Conservatives page coming 2nd and his Twitter 3rd.

David Cameron fared better than Ms Bennett in the search suggestions category; the Green Party leader not featuring at all and Mr Cameron losing out only to David Beckham.

Mr Cameron also wins a landslide victory on Twitter with 990K followers (more than any other candidate), however he does have a significant advantage in exposure when you consider the fact that he has been UK Prime Minister for the past 5 years. As a result of this we have decided to share the bronze medal between the two of them.

The Losers

Ed Miliband Labour

Website: http://action.labour.org.uk/people/detail/ed-miliband

Despite a recent upturn for Mr Miliband in opinion polls, he was left out in the cold at this election. His page on Labour’s website does not appear until you go to the second page of Google results. His Twitter page does make it onto the first page but fails to climb above sixth place.

Ed fares slightly better in the search suggestion category – coming in second behind only Ed Sheeran. It may be of little consolation to the Labour Leader that he has the second highest amount of Twitter followers of any candidate.

However Ed Miliband is being searched for more than any other candidate, displaying an upturn in the amount of public interest in him. It’s a shame that his website isn’t up at the top of the SERP to take advantage of this increase in traffic.

Nicola Sturgeon SNP

Website: http://www.snp.org/people/nicola-sturgeon

By far the biggest loser at the 2015 SEO elections was Nicola Sturgeon, leader of the Scottish National Party. Nicola’s profile on the SNP page does not feature at all in any of the 22 pages of search results for “Nicola Sturgeon”. In fact this had us wondering if such a page even exists. However if you refine your search to “Nicola Sturgeon SNP”, then there it is in 3rd place.

Ms. Sturgeon did fare slightly better in the search suggestion category – coming up first for “Nicola”, but this will be of little consolation to the SNP leader. This result is an unparalleled failure when it comes to SEO and makes you seriously question who it is that she has in charge of her online marketing campaign. Fortunately for Nicola the general election is not going to be won or lost on Google, but if it was she’d be left wandering in the wilderness wondering where it all went wrong.

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George Gangar is an expert in digital marketing who regularly writes articles for the JSEO news center. His accessible writing style and extensive knowledge of his field make his articles an excellent resource for those looking to stay up to date with the latest developments in the industry.